


nuven'inan ma

by jeweleeah



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dreamsharing, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Tresspasser, spoilers for DA:I Trespasser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 02:02:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13308051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeweleeah/pseuds/jeweleeah
Summary: Inspired by the cards in the Trespasser epilogue: "Lavellan sometimes came awake from dreams in which her lover watched her sadly from across an endless distance / If they were more an simple dreams, she could not say, for every time she reached for him, he vanished into nothing."





	nuven'inan ma

**Author's Note:**

> I finished Trespasser for the first time like two days ago and it really just broke my heart. I've always found the Solas romance tragic but this took it to a whole new level and I had to write something for it. Apologies if its a bit rough - I haven't written in a while and haven't written anything for public consumption for ever longer.
> 
> thank you so much to project elvhen (fenxshiral) and the dragon age wiki for giving me fantastic content that i then took a butchers knife to.

She is no mage, and what she knows of her own dreams is limited. Snatches of memory fluttering behind her eyelids as she drifts slowly to consciousness, strange, almost-familiar thoughts that push their way to the front of her mind as she makes her way down the stairs after she rises, ideas that she cannot quite source. She is no mage, but she knows that these dreams are different. 

A warmth she can cannot quite feel, golden sunlight streaming through the trees, the scent of elfroot and apples and Dalish ale. There is joy on the faces of her people, ~~a serenity she never witnessed in the years she spent with them, struggling and grasping to survive.~~  Children running, letting their laughter float into the air, giving no pause to who or what they could attract with such noise. Aravels that seem to scrape the sky in their magnificence, firey reds and oranges against the verdant green of the forest. Friendship and familiarity, people she has not seen in years suddenly within an arms length, peace smoothing their usually furrowed brows. The titter of Halla, prancing away from the running children, soft and healthy and bathed in warm, late afternoon light. ~~A movement in the treeline.~~  Somebody hands her ale. She smiles and drinks and listens to the loving chatter of her clan fill the space around her. Music begins to play. 

~~But all of the wildlife goes quiet.~~

It is a slow unraveling, an unsure stumble towards conscious dreaming that she does not understand. A friend she has known since birth smiles at her, turns and asks her something, his face catching in the light - ~~cool, grey eyes watching her, rather than the warm, dark brown ones she remembers.~~  She moves to stand, but the soft caress of grass and ground does not meet her feet. She glances down to see fine Orlesian boots. She goes to remove them but is distracted by the children's laughter again. It is getting farther and farther away. She looks up to see them climbing the aravels, disappearing into energetic green specks against the sails as they go up, up, up into the sky. Worry grips her gut. Somebody taps her on the shoulder, and she turns. She cannot recall their name, cannot recall _them_ , but they hug her anyhow. She does not hug back. She looks down at her hands, turning them over and over and over again as the stranger walks away, studying her gloves. They are familiar, well worn and well loved but -

"What troubles you, Da'len?" Her Keeper's voice is warm, and lovely, and reminds her of childhood, reminds her of knowledge she longed to be trusted with, hours of study by small fires. She closes her eyes. Everything is there, but ever so slightly skewed - like the blur of an Orlesian painting when one gets too close.  

"The stitching on my gloves was never white." 

She is left in silence. She opens her eyes to see her clan gazing at her curiously. Her stomach turns. 

A disorienting thing, to realize that you are not where you thought you were. Not in the Emerald Graves, large and tragic and humming with a trace of ancient magic. Not near the Halla, gently grazing in a patch of grass to your side. Not surrounded by your kin, familiar faces that she misses so profoundly it is like a wound in her side. 

She blinks, once, twice, three times. 

Her Halla, her clan, the beautiful aravels - all vanish.

~~Movement in the treeline.~~

The briefest of hesitations. 

If she closes her eyes she can still hear the children, still smell the apples, can almost feel the sun on her skin. She could forget the fact of her dreaming, could slip back into this vague, half imagined memory of sunlight, laughter, safety. She could awaken later, rested and nostalgic for that which never was, no thought given to this moment of reality that taints her sleep. There is a choice to be made -

~~The faraway crack of a branch breaking underfoot.~~

\- but not truly. She is sorry for even considering it. There is no going back. There never has been. 

 

It is now that she looks for him. She does not know, immediately, what she is searching for. It takes a moment to come back to her,  _he_ takes a moment to come back to her - but she always remembers.

For this, she is not sorry. In both the waking world and her unconscious mind, she will never stop looking for him. 

And there, in these strange and dreamless dreams, he is here. A motion on the periphery, stalking the borders of her thoughts, slipping in and out of her sight - but real and certain and more alive than the silent forest in which she stands.  

A tingle up the ridge of her spine, a shift in the nearly tangible breeze, a pair of eyes peering out at her in the way off distance. Sometimes man, sometimes wolf, sometimes neither. Or is it both? She cares not. 

He settles into her line of sight, but she knows better than to go to him. She is gifted with the fleeting knowledge that this is not the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. There is no chase here, no pursuit, no endless give and take of the space between them. Yes, she would render the world asunder to find him again, but here, now, she simply stays. Stares. Speaks. 

 -

There are times when she is furious with him. Screams, cries, shakes the very foundations of this place with her rage. The whole dream-world around her flashes red, morphs into an atmosphere that buzzes and stings with unconstrained betrayal. Every moment of her quietly swallowing down jealousy towards those with joy in their lives, ignoring knowing looks of pity from people close to her, the building frustration of a fruitless search for a lost love - unleashed across an endless distance and unto a shadowed figure. 

_Ma ha'rel lasa! Dirthara-ma! Ma banal las ha'lam'shir va vhen!_

~~_You lied to me. May you learn! You do nothing to further our people!_ ~~

The wolf does not answer. 

-

When she is weary and weeping and wracked with sorrow. When she sits and prays and bargains. Rain falls and the sky cracks and the forest floods, if she is to drown in her sorrow than so shall the world. The sharp emptiness she feels underneath her ribs, the hole where her heart once was, a brightness that has gone out of her life. She drowns them in it, watches the world fill with the tears she has shed, the pain she has contained, sits and sobs as the world goes blue, crying through the water in her lungs. 

_Sa'vunin, ar gen'av'ahna ma. Mi'nas'sal'inan. Ar lath 'ma, vhenan._

~~_One more day, I beg you. I feel the knife once more within my soul. I love you, my heart._ ~~

The man will not look at her. 

-

When she is cut off from him, from herself, from feeling anything at all. The world is so bright it hurts, but there is no warmth to light, no comfort here. The brilliant hue of numbness. A faint buzzing, like insects in your skull. She sees nothing, imagines nothing, floods everything around her with light until she cannot be seen - like watching birds fly across the sun. She stares his ever-shifting shape down, bares the gaping hole in her chest to this too bright world, uncaring, unfeeling, no reserves of self preservation left. 

_Fen'Harel. Solas. Ane vindhrust minen? Ma'las a'melin ne ha'lam._

~~_Dreaded wolf. Prideful man. Are you truly these? I hope you find a new name._ ~~

Whatever it is, there in the distance, whatever he is, gives no sign of hearing her. 

-

When she understands, somehow. When something ancient and terrifying and almost familiar within her would see him enact his plan. Whispers of a world of crystalline wonder, floating through the air, the thrum of magic heady and recognized by every bone in her body as it pulses through her, an entire people living amongst the clouds. Visions of a world described to her half asleep, the memory of a hand trailing up and down her spine, a lovers promise of a world where she would have belonged. Pleading, reverent, on her knees, begging him to succeed. 

_Halani 'a'vhen! Lasa revas! Ane amin!_

~~_Help your people! Grant us freedom! You are the one!_ ~~

The wolf/man/something-else retreats into the thoughtless black behind him. 

-

When she understands nothing. Alone in this imagined place, engulfed by silence, and can feel but not see him. Deep, shifting hues of memory and pain and hopeless day dreaming fill the air. It as if she cannot stop bleeding but no wounds mar her skin. The world awash in that which was, which could have been, which never will be. She feels it everywhere, this loss, this betrayal, this sheer confusion that floods her now. He left and yet he remains. She would do much of anything to have him again and yet she is stuck, in this wakened sleeping state, longing for him, taunted by his almost-presence. 

_Garas quenathra? Ahn garas o ma'abelas? Ahnsul tel'elanas varas em ebalan? Ame i'tel 'ma vhenan._

~~_Why do you come here? What do you gain from my sorrow? Why can you not leave me to mourn? I am without my heart._ ~~

 Just this once - not heard, but felt, understood, known - an answer:  

 _Garan min'an i'lath'i'abelas._   _Ame athlanem halam'shivanas. Min'laimasha ma'suledin, 'ma vhenan. Tel'in fra lathbora viran. Mar alas'en nuven'inas._

 ****_~~I enter this place with love and sorrow. I am called to the sweet sacrifice of duty. This loss is mine to endure, my heart. Do not dwell on the path to a place of lost love. Your world needs you.~~ _

_Nuven'inan ma._

~~_I need you._ ~~

_Melenas, vhenan._

~~_Patience, heart._ ~~

 

She awakens. Time continues, the search continues, the dreams - poorly remembered - continue. She does not falter, does not listen to those who remind her of the impossible nature of her task. Something in her has calmed, a sea of rage and confusion within her as been lulled to gentle determination. 

Patience, she tells her heart. She does not quite know why. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! 
> 
> a lot of the elvhen i took some liberties with because we really have so little of the language - so besides specific phrases already found in canon, most of it is the general concepts applied in an english format. 
> 
> thank you again for reading and pls lmk if you liked it!


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